Plugins

I recently rewrote my WordPress Tweaks plugin and have launched the new edition as version 2.0. The previous version of WordPress Tweaks (version 1.8) was released 3 years ago (back when WordPress was at version 2.5), so the plugin was definitely in need of an upgrade!

Version 2.0 adds 5 new tweaks, removes 13 outdated tweaks, fixes a few tweaks that broke between WordPress 2.5 and 3.1, adheres to new plugin development best practices that have emerged since WP 2.5, adds an instant search bar, and ups the minimum WordPress requirement from 2.1 to 3.1 (quite the jump!).

For those who aren’t familiar with the plugin, WordPress Tweaks gathers a plethora of assorted options into a convenient list of checkboxes and dropdowns. (WordPress Tweaks is in the same vein as Microsoft’s abandoned TweakUI program, for those who remember it.)

Here’s the current list of supported tweaks:

Admin

Automatically scroll to the post editor

Disable the admin bar

Disable the Dashboard

Disable the “Search Engines Blocked” notice

Disable tag autocomplete

Disable WordPress’s admin footer text/links

Comments and Pings

Disable self-pinging

Dofollow comment author links

Dofollow comment body links

Open external comment links in new windows

Media

Disable the Flash uploader

Default media inserter tab

From Computer

From URL

Gallery

Media Library

JPEG Quality

Posts

Disable post revisions

Force excerpts on archives

Open external post links in new windows

Add a “Continue reading” link to excerpts

Install Now

Ready to start tweaking? Log in to the admin section of your WordPress blog, go to Plugins > Add New, and search for “WordPress Tweaks.”

Recently, the Dev4Press and Weblog Tools Collection blogs made posts about integrating plugin changelogs into the Plugins dashboard. This functionality was something I was already doing in the SEO Ultimate plugin, so I thought I’d share my technique for doing this. (My method is different because it’s simpler and it integrates directly into WordPress’s update message.)

Here’s what an inline changelog looks like when implemented:

As you can see, a small notice like this helps users know at-a-glance what’s new in your plugin update.

Normally when I set up plugin-level SEO on a WordPress blog, I’ll need 5-8 plugins to provide all the desired SEO functionality. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was one plugin that incorporated all that functionality and more into one easy-to-use suite?

There are a ton of WordPress plugins out there, so it’s no surprise that many are lost in the crowd. Here are three great plugins that I think deserve more attention (inspired by this post from a year ago):

Version 1.7 of the WordPress Tweaks plugin features the following under-the-hood changes:

Internationalization support for all strings

Nonce support for the administration interface to guard against unauthorized changes

Other minor enhancements and fixes

For those who aren’t familiar with WordPress Tweaks, it is a multi-purpose plugin specializing in simple toggle-on/off changes. It adds many useful settings pertaining to comments, posts, SEO, security, the administration back-end, and much more.